The Korea Times
amn_close.png
amn_bl.png
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
amn_bl.png
Business
  • Tech
  • Bio
  • Companies
amn_bl.png
Finance
  • Companies
  • Economy
  • Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
amn_bl.png
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
amn_bl.png
Lifestyle
  • Travel & Food
  • Trends
  • People & Events
  • Books
  • Around Town
  • Fortune Telling
amn_bl.png
Entertainment & Arts
  • K-pop
  • Films
  • Shows & Dramas
  • Music
  • Theater & Others
amn_bl.png
Sports
amn_bl.png
World
  • SCMP
  • Asia
amn_bl.png
Video
  • Korean Storytellers
  • POPKORN
  • Culture
  • People
  • News
amn_bl.png
Photos
  • Photo News
  • Darkroom
amn_NK.png amn_DR.png amn_LK.png amn_LE.png
  • bt_fb_on_2022.svgbt_fb_over_2022.svg
  • bt_twitter_on_2022.svgbt_twitter_over_2022.svg
  • bt_youtube_on_2022.svgbt_youtube_over_2022.svg
  • bt_instagram_on_2022.svgbt_instagram_over_2022.svg
The Korea Times
amn_close.png
amn_bl.png
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
amn_bl.png
Business
  • Tech
  • Bio
  • Companies
amn_bl.png
Finance
  • Companies
  • Economy
  • Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
amn_bl.png
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
amn_bl.png
Lifestyle
  • Travel & Food
  • Trends
  • People & Events
  • Books
  • Around Town
  • Fortune Telling
amn_bl.png
Entertainment & Arts
  • K-pop
  • Films
  • Shows & Dramas
  • Music
  • Theater & Others
amn_bl.png
Sports
amn_bl.png
World
  • SCMP
  • Asia
amn_bl.png
Video
  • Korean Storytellers
  • POPKORN
  • Culture
  • People
  • News
amn_bl.png
Photos
  • Photo News
  • Darkroom
amn_NK.png amn_DR.png amn_LK.png amn_LE.png
  • bt_fb_on_2022.svgbt_fb_over_2022.svg
  • bt_twitter_on_2022.svgbt_twitter_over_2022.svg
  • bt_youtube_on_2022.svgbt_youtube_over_2022.svg
  • bt_instagram_on_2022.svgbt_instagram_over_2022.svg
  • Login
  • Register
  • Login
  • Register
  • The Korea Times
  • search
  • all menu
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Photos
  • Video
  • World
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment & Art
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Business
  • National
  • North Korea
  • 1

    Revenge rises as key theme in K-dramas

  • 3

    Zebra captured after escaping from Seoul zoo

  • 5

    Sexual assaults by Korean diplomats continue despite zero-tolerance policy

  • 7

    Outback Steakhouse sees sales soar as it opens stores in large shopping malls

  • 9

    Samsung, SK avoid worst-case scenario as US 'guardrails' are less stringent than feared

  • 11

    Korean pension fund hit by overseas banking crisis

  • 13

    Childbirths sink 6% to fresh low in January

  • 15

    Campaign launched to promote equal treatment for multicultural families

  • 17

    Sandstorm from China forecast to push up fine dust levels in Korea

  • 19

    INTERVIEWRetired FSC chief finds inspiration exploring Koreans' ancestral roots

  • 2

    Consumers choose to travel abroad over purchasing luxury goods

  • 4

    Korean firms balk at donating to fund compensating victims of Japan's forced labor

  • 6

    World water day

  • 8

    Main opposition leader indicted, faces calls to resign

  • 10

    Jeon Jong-seo discusses her first Hollywood role in 'Mona Lisa and Blood Moon'

  • 12

    Apple working on expanding Apple Pay service in Korea: senior executive

  • 14

    INTERVIEWKorean adoptee in Germany reunites with birth family after 42 years

  • 16

    Investment banks compete for HMM sale advisory roles

  • 18

    Hyundai Heavy achieves world's first 200 million BHP milestone

  • 20

    Opposition leader indicted over development corruption scandal

Close scrollclosebutton

Close for 24 hours

Open
  • The Korea Times
  • search
  • all menu
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Photos
  • Video
  • World
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment & Art
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Business
  • National
  • North Korea
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
Fri, March 24, 2023 | 05:21
The Dawn of Modern Korea
(497) Buying and Selling of Sex
Posted : 2008-06-26 15:49
Updated : 2008-06-26 15:49
Print PreviewPrint Preview
Font Size UpFont Size Up
Font Size DownFont Size Down
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • kakaolink
  • whatsapp
  • reddit
  • mailto
  • link
By Andrei Lankov

Traditionally, most East Asian countries have had few scruples with regard to extramarital sex as far as males were concerned, but before 1900, Japan was remarkable in the development of commercial prostitution on a grand scale.

In this regard it was different from Korea, where in old times only the rich and famous could afford to buy expensive sexual services from gisaeng girls, while the ``low orders'' usually had no access to commercial sex whatsoever.

The Korean nationalists love to stress this fact, explaining it as another indication of the alleged ``spiritual purity'' of Koreans. Well, less lofty explanations are more likely, but it is difficult to deny that the large-scale prostitution industry was created by the Japanese presence.

In the 1850s, Japan was ``opened'' to the world, but for decades afterward it remained a very poor place, so ``export-oriented'' prostitution became a major industry there.

The Japanese working girls, known as ``karayuki-san'' (``those going overseas''), plied their trade across Asia, from Sydney to Vladivostok, from Shanghai to Singapore, usually supervised by Japanese brothel owners.

A Japanese prostitute and brothel remained ubiquitous components of urban life in the Asia-Pacific for the decades between 1870 and 1920, and remittances from these girls, who duly sent their earnings back home, were said to be the third biggest foreign currency earner for Japan at the turn of the 20th century.

Of course, neighboring Korea became one of the areas where Japanese prostitution flourished. Contrary to the now common misperception, typical commercial sexual encounters in Korea before 1900 did not involve a poor Korean girl serving some lusty Japanese male.

If anything, the situation in which a Korean male purchased sex from a Japanese female was probably more common. Until the 1910s, the vast majority of prostitutes operating in the country were Japanese.

When a Japanese man in the southeastern port of Busan opened a brothel around 1880 where he employed four Korean women, his establishment was immediately closed down, and both he and his female employees were punished.

In the early stage of the Japanese presence in Korea, until the 1890s, the consular authorities did not want mixed establishments, lest it would produce unnecessary complications.

The brothel keepers and their female employees were among the first to arrive in Korea once it was open for foreign trade and exchange in 1876. As is clear from a dispatch by a Japanese consul, in 1881-82, there were a hundred Japanese working girls in Busan.

A few dozen prostitutes plied their trade in the northeastern port of Wonsan, another important port city. From the beginning, the Japanese consular authorities in Busan were pressing Tokyo for permission to legalize prostitution and establish some supervision over the ``vice.''

Initial suggestions were rejected, but then the government gave up, and in late 1881 prostitution was legalized.

The Japanese consulates in Busan and Wonsan issued the brothels with sets of instructions, more or less similar to those used in Japan (in those days foreign consuls wielded administrative power and could issue and enforce laws in regard to ``their'' communities).

The prostitutes had to be registered, checked for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) on a regular basis, and brothel keepers were expected to pay taxes. By 1883, there were 94 registered prostitutes in Busan, working in nine brothels and serving a population of 997 males.

However, in Incheon, Korea's third major open port, things did not move as smoothly. The Japanese foreign ministry rejected the demands to license brothels there. It was believed that the attempt to legalize prostitution in Incheon would lead to some political problems.

Unlike Busan and Wonsan where the foreign community was almost exclusively Japanese, Incheon had a sizable number of Western residents, and Japanese diplomats were afraid that an open endorsement of prostitution would damage the country's image. These were Victorian times, after all, and Japan was very sensitive to what the West thought of it.

The Japanese consuls in Incheon were keeping pressure on their supervisors, citing the frequency of STDs and other dangers associated with the clandestine sexual industry which flourished in the port city, but Tokyo stressed that such activities should not be officially endorsed in the presence of Westerners with their Victorian ideas about sexuality.

Being disciplined officials, the Japanese consuls tried hard to impose regulations they likely considered unnecessary.

The regulations did not help: The presence of young migrant males, being used to commercial sex back home, was bound to produce a huge demand for prostitution ― legal or not.

In the 1880s the Japanese consular authorities in Incheon, in an attempt to curb the problem, even briefly prohibited the immigration to Korea of Japanese women aged between 13 and 30 if these women were neither wives of Japanese migrants nor employees of some officially recognized business.

Once again, the regulations remind us that in the prostitution industry at that time both the sellers and buyers of sexual services were Japanese.

However, the situation did not last. The arrival of Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 made official recognition of brothels unavoidable.

Around this time, a small but growing number of Korean women also began to be lured or forced into prostitution by Japanese pimps. Prostitution ceased to be a strictly Japanese business and soon spread through Korean society as well.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea,'' which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.
 
Top 10 Stories
1[INTERVIEW] Korean adoptee in Germany reunites with birth family after 42 years INTERVIEWKorean adoptee in Germany reunites with birth family after 42 years
2Retailers rush to adopt Apple Pay system Retailers rush to adopt Apple Pay system
3Will exempting foreign nannies from minimum wage boost Korea's birth rate? Will exempting foreign nannies from minimum wage boost Korea's birth rate?
4[INTERVIEW] Expert pitches Laotian rural reform to solve NK's chronic food shortages INTERVIEWExpert pitches Laotian rural reform to solve NK's chronic food shortages
5Daughter of North Korean dictator seen wearing $1,900 Dior jacket Daughter of North Korean dictator seen wearing $1,900 Dior jacket
6[INTERVIEW] Forbes-listed entrepreneur pursues partnerships with Samsung, LG, SK to help Ukraine INTERVIEWForbes-listed entrepreneur pursues partnerships with Samsung, LG, SK to help Ukraine
7Will Apple Pay launch boost local iPhone sales? Will Apple Pay launch boost local iPhone sales?
8[INTERVIEW] 'Welcome to world of art therapy' INTERVIEW'Welcome to world of art therapy'
9Indonesian students advise Korean bank on entering Indonesian market Indonesian students advise Korean bank on entering Indonesian market
10Korea to start mass production of KF-21 in 2024 Korea to start mass production of KF-21 in 2024
Top 5 Entertainment News
1Revenge rises as key theme in K-dramas Revenge rises as key theme in K-dramas
2Jeon Jong-seo discusses her first Hollywood role in 'Mona Lisa and Blood Moon' Jeon Jong-seo discusses her first Hollywood role in 'Mona Lisa and Blood Moon'
3SF9's Jaeyoon starts mandatory military service SF9's Jaeyoon starts mandatory military service
4Yoo Yeon-seok threatens to sue people spreading accusations about him Yoo Yeon-seok threatens to sue people spreading accusations about him
5Lee Som, Ahn Jae-hong to play married couple in Tving's new series Lee Som, Ahn Jae-hong to play married couple in Tving's new series
DARKROOM
  • Turkey-Syria earthquake

    Turkey-Syria earthquake

  • Nepal plane crash

    Nepal plane crash

  • Brazil capital uprising

    Brazil capital uprising

  • Happy New Year 2023

    Happy New Year 2023

  • World Cup 2022 Final - Argentina vs France

    World Cup 2022 Final - Argentina vs France

CEO & Publisher : Oh Young-jin
Digital News Email : webmaster@koreatimes.co.kr
Tel : 02-724-2114
Online newspaper registration No : 서울,아52844
Date of registration : 2020.02.05
Masthead : The Korea Times
Copyright © koreatimes.co.kr. All rights reserved.
  • About Us
  • Introduction
  • History
  • Contact Us
  • Products & Services
  • Subscribe
  • E-paper
  • RSS Service
  • Content Sales
  • Site Map
  • Policy
  • Code of Ethics
  • Ombudsman
  • Privacy Statement
  • Terms of Service
  • Copyright Policy
  • Family Site
  • Hankook Ilbo
  • Dongwha Group